Not Any Other Day
by otherhawk
Summary: Inspired by Macx's Pushing Boundaries series. A not-at-all serious look at pack bonding through Dan Carter's eyes. Also, velociraptors are adorable. Chapter 3: Predator behaviour, he might say, except that left him to imagine a raptor sitting in Starbucks holding a latte. Really, it was possible to go too far in cataloguing Owen's raptor traits.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This story is entirely inspired by the world and characters created by Macx in the amazing Pushing Boundaries series. I wrote it after having read the entire series about three times in as many weeks. If you haven't already read it - somehow - I urge you to do so now. All credit goes to Macx, and no OC in this is mine.**

* * *

Carter stepped out of the hospital having spent the last hour taking statements from a couple of tourists who had apparently got into a fight after spending too long in the Hilton bar. Considering it was barely eleven in the morning, he wasn't impressed. Privately, anyway. He had never really hit the 'dino-craze' as a kid, but really? You fly all this way to where dinosaurs walk the earth – to where the impossible happened on a daily basis – and you spend your time getting drunk? He almost had more respect for the idiots who tried to climb the fences to get their selfies up close and personal. Almost. Not really.

He was brought out of his exasperated musings by the sight of Owen Grady walking the other way into the hospital. He raised an eyebrow as he intercepted him. "Don't tell me you've managed to injure yourself again?" Truthfully, he was only half joking, and he visually checked the man over quickly.

Owen scowled. "And good morning to you. No, I'm just here to get my booster shots."

Oh, yes. There had been an email sent around yesterday afternoon. Apparently two of the new baby gallimimus had picked up an infection that might have been transmitted from a human. Not definite, and not, thankfully, life threatening, but enough that there had been an email sent around for all staff with direct dinosaur contact to come in for booster vaccines. And of course no one had more direct dinosaur contact than their resident alpha.

"I haven't even been sick in years," Owen went on with a grimace.

"Better safe than sorry, right?" he pointed out easily. "The last thing we want is some infection running riot."

A shadow fell briefly over Owen's face. "True," he said shortly.

Carter suddenly remembered that according to the files the other pack of velociraptors, before Blue and the others, had died from an infection. The thought of that happening to the squad was a frightening one, and it must be far more so for Owen.

He was watching, and he caught the brief flicker in Owen's eyes, the involuntary fraction-of-a-second glance towards the other side of the island and something – someone. Four someones. - that he couldn't possibly see. Carter wondered, not for the first time, what _other_ conversation Owen might be having right now. What couldn't he, Carter, hear? Words of reassurance? A question? It wasn't telepathy, Owen had made that clear enough, but it _was_ communication. The man standing in front of him might be communicating with a raptor several miles away right now. Somehow, that never stopped being weird. Or amazing.

"Though your girls were specially bred against that, weren't they," he added, casually, pretending he hadn't noticed a thing. Which he wouldn't have, if he hadn't been looking for it. Owen was good at keeping his secrets.

Owen smiled slightly. "They've never been sick either," he replied.

Which was good. No one really discussed what might happen to Owen if the pack died, or vice versa, but it was part of Carter's remit to come up with contingencies for both. "Good," he said. "Are you coming to movie night tonight? Your friend Nancy invited me. And then she mentioned something about Juanita from the botany department...I have a feeling she's trying to set me up."

"Good luck," Owen grinned. "That's not something I can help with. And yes, I'll be there. I'd better go before I'm late for my appointment. See you later, Dan."

"Right." He watched Owen walk away, and then started heading back to security, hoping that the rest of the day would be quiet at least.

* * *

It was just after lunch when he got the call from Claire Dearing "I'm afraid we might have a problem," she began, with very little preamble.

And those were words that could send a shiver of dread up any man's spine. Especially a man in charge of security at the world's most potentially dangerous theme park. "What's wrong?"

"Dr Annika Svenson just called me," Claire went on. "She's been innoculating the trainers and some of them have been reporting side effects."

"What kind of side effects?" he asked sharply.

"Nothing too serious, so far, she says," she reassured him. "Dizzyness, drowsiness, and, um...'" She coughed slightly. "Feelings of euphoria'."

He digested that for a brief second. "They're _high?"_

"Something like that," she agreed, sounding like this was the last way she wanted her afternoon to go. "And all the ones who are reporting the side effects are pretenaturally talented. She's not sure if it was a bad batch, or if it's some kind of specific reaction."

"If it is, it sounds like something she should have been warned about already," he said, frowning.

Claire sounded exasperated. "I'm just the messenger, Mr Carter. Pretenatural pharmacology isn't my area of expertise. It isn't even Dr Svenson's area. Honestly, I'm not sure that there _is_ an expert."

Probably not. He'd investigated enough now to be certain that maintaining a low profile was basically standard operating practice for pretenaturals. "You know, we probably have more talented people working here than anywhere else in the world," he said. "I know they're not here to be studied, but if there's a possibility that this sort of thing could happen - "

" - I'll think about taking it up with Mr Masrani," she interrupted. "But that's not why I called you. Dr Svenson's managed to make contact with all our known talented staff who've had the inoculations...except one."

There was that feeling of dread again. "Who?"

"Owen," she said with a resigned sigh. "I've tried calling as well. He's not answering his phone. Now, all the others seem absolutely fine, so probably he's just sleeping it off, if he's affected at all, but I would appreciate it if - "

" - I'll head out there right away," he promised.

"Thank you," she said gratefully. "Let me know that everything's okay as soon as you can."

* * *

When he'd first started working here, if he'd got that call, he would have assumed that Owen was in serious trouble, that the raptor pack would have spotted a weakness and turned on him. Even as recently as a year ago, he would have been concerned at least, as to how they would react. Now, as he drove up towards the paddock and Owen's house, his only real worry was that Owen might have had a worse reaction to the injection than the others. After all, by the sounds of things, no one actually knew how this worked – suppose it was worse based on the strength of the talent, or how often it was used?

He spotted that the paddock door was open the moment he got close. O-kay. He genuinely did trust in Owen's control – influence – on the pack, and he knew that they had no reason to want to harm him, but the knowledge that four apex predators could be lurking anywhere near by was always going to be enough to set the hairs on the back of his neck prickling.

So he was cautious when he got out the jeep, looking around, aware of his gun but keeping his hands clear of it, making sure to keep his body language relaxed and unconcerned. Not a threat and not prey...but really, he didn't need to bother because all four raptors were in the paddock, along with their alpha.

Huh.

Owen was slumping, with one arm slung across Blue's neck, the other over Delta, a large goofy smile on his face as he spoke lovingly into Blue's shoulder. "...and you're amazing...so clever...so beautiful...you know I love you – all of you – right?" Meanwhile, Blue was making a sort of crooning noise, Delta was nosing at Owen's hand, Echo appeared to be trying to fit beneath the leather jacket Owen was wearing, and Charlie was gazing in apparent fascination at her own feet as she did something like a soft-shoe shuffle.

Apex predators. Right.

"Owen?" he called, trying to sound casual. Normal.

Five heads snapped up, looking at him with somehow identical expressions of interest. "Oh, hi, Carter," Owen said. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to check on you," he said easily. "Claire and Dr Svenson have been trying to get hold of you. They were worried you might have a reaction to that shot you got."

Owen shrugged, making Delta wobble slightly as she leaned on him. "I feel fine."

Uh huh. "You want to maybe come back to the hospital with me so Dr Svenson can check you over?" he tried.

"Nah," Owen said, still beaming in a way that Carter somehow found incredibly disconcerting. "Maybe later. Right now I want to spend time with my girls. Have you seen how amazing they are?" He reached back and patted Echo vaguely and she made a sound that Carter would _swear_ was almost a purr. "They're all brilliant. I just...I can't get over how brilliant they are. How lucky I am."

Blue gave a soft, sharp bark and pushed herself closer into Owen's side.

"Yeah, I love you too," Owen said, as in in answer and then paused, head cocked to one side as if he was listening. "Never," he said decidedly, to a question that Carter would never know.

He considered for a brief second, the merits of trying to remove Owen from the pack when Owen didn't want to go and _none_ of them were apparently in their right minds. No, on the whole, that sounded like the opposite of a good idea.

Discretion being the better part of valour, he retreated back towards Owen's house, keeping a close eye on the paddock, and called Claire. "So is Dr Svenson sure that the side effects are harmless?" he asked.

"It certainly seems that way," she said. "The ones who got the injection yesterday are all back to normal now. Have you found Owen?"

"Oh, yes," he said resignedly. "Apparently the mood part of the side effects can be transmitted through the pack bond. I'm currently looking at a stoned pack of velociraptors and their alpha who's busy telling each of them how much he loves them."

There was silence for a long moment. "Oh, God," Claire said at last.

"This really wasn't covered when I took this job," he mused. "I think I should get a bonus for Owen Grady-related weirdness."

"I think we could _all_ claim that," she said tartly. "I...does he seem alright?"

"Seems to be," he said, watching Owen sit down happily and lean back against Charlie, while Blue put her head across his lap. "Just...maybe a little more cuddly and a little less discreet than usual. I don't want to risk going in there to get him out though."

"No," she agreed. "No, just...stay there and keep an eye on him. And let me know if anything changes."

"Will do," he said, and Owen was now rubbing the back of Blue's head, like she was an overgrown kitten.

"Cuddly?" she repeated incredulously, and he could imagine the way she was shaking her head. "Take pictures. Lots of pictures."

Definitely.

* * *

 **A/N: Thanks for reading, let me know what you think.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks to Macx for the encouragement, I'm going to continue this for a few chapters at least.**

* * *

Owen woke with the sure and certain knowledge that his head was killing him, and that there was a velociraptor lying on his arm.

"Geddoff," he mumbled, his face pressed deep into a scaly leg.

There was a rumble of reptilian amusement from his other side. _Delta can't stand up while you are lying on top of her, alpha._

Oh. Right. He opened his eye a crack and groaned as light flooded in. Oh, that was a mistake. He cringed and screwed his eyes shut again, trying to block out the pain, and he was rewarded by the feeling of Blue's physical presence at his back as her mind wrapped soothingly around his.

He sighed, conceding to himself that he was going to carry on lying here, amid a pile of raptors, just for a few minutes longer...

It occurred to him that this was a feeling no other human had ever, or would ever, experience. No one else would feel safe – no one else would _be_ safe.

Now, if only he could remember just how he had got here, and why his tongue tasted furry. To be honest, he felt hungover, but the problem with _that_ was that he never drank enough to get hangovers, and he was certain he hadn't been drinking yesterday.

Yesterday. Let's see, he had gone to the hospital for that booster shot, and he'd bumped into Carter and spent some time talking to Annika, then he'd rode home on his bike. He remembered the journey in detail, remembered how bright the colours of the trees had been, how he'd watched the blue of the sky, ignoring the road and enjoying the wind in his air, going faster and faster, until Blue had asked him what was wrong, wrapped up with a tinge of caution and a warning he should slow down, and he'd felt the pack in his mind, alerted by his beta's concern, and it had been – amazing. He'd been acutely aware of all the wonder of the pack bond, the impossibility of it all, and he'd rushed to share his joy and good mood with the girls.

He groaned again. Not because of the headache this time. _Yesterday. I -_

 _\- You were broadcasting very loudly,_ Blue confirmed, amusement and concern both running through her mental 'voice'.

Not good. Anxiously, he reached out, mentally checking each of the girls in turn, ignoring his headache in his need to make sure that his whatever-the-hell-yesterday-had-been hadn't hurt them in some way, or disrupted their bond, their balance.

Delta; lying on top of his left arm while he lay on top of her leg, was still mostly-asleep, grumpy at anything that threatened to wake her.

Charlie; on his right was awake and watchful, eyeing him curiously and wondering at the disruption to their normal routine. As his mind brushed against hers, she gave a small chirp of inquiry, and he wordlessly reassured her through the bond.

Echo; curled and comfortable, her snout just touching his legs, was delighted to wake up with her alpha right there, and he got the impression that she was now of the opinion that sleepovers were the best thing ever.

And Blue, pressed against his back, reassuring him. _Everything is fine, Owen._

It seemed so. He breathed out slowly.

Casting his mind back, he had vague memories of the girls pressed in around him, the undercurrent of happy, spaced-out raptors almost overwhelming. It must have reflected back on him, and then back and forth between them, amplifying the effects, and since it came from him, they wouldn't have been able to avoid it, not without pushing him away hard.

 _I would not,_ Blue told him. _You are alpha. Never a threat._

He absorbed her absolute confidence. And no harm had been done, and, from the way he – they – had been acting, he doubted that he would have been in any kind of frame of mind to deal with the pack rejecting him.

Blue's amusement grew. _You were very definite that it was 'cuddle time'._

Seemed the only casualty here had been dignity.

"Still sorry," he said out loud, speaking to all of them, gingerly pulling himself up enough for Delta to shuffle off his arm with much grumbling. He sat up, struggling, for a moment, against the feelings of nausea and vertigo. This was no fun at all. He clenched and unclenched his fist a couple of times. Pins and needles. Great.

"Think I need to have a few words with Dr Svensson," he said grimly. The only thing yesterday he could think might have caused this were those inoculations. And he certainly didn't remember being warned of these sorts of side effects.

 _They are already aware,_ Blue told him calmly. _Carter was here before._

Ah. Yes, if he tried, he could hazily remember Carter standing just outside the paddock, trying to persuade him to go to the hospital.

 _Barry is here now,_ Blue added.

Hmmm? He slipped sideways for a moment, looking through Blue's eyes, too tired and wrong-feeling to bother caring that it seemed so much easier to do that than to turn his own head.

Sure enough, Barry was approaching the paddock. The gate was closed over, but he wasn't sure if it was locked. "Owen?" Barry called out. "You awake?"

"Yeah," he grunted, holding up a hand in what was hopefully a reassuring gesture. "Getting there anyway."

He heard a sigh of relief. "Good. You been asleep for twelve hours. Carter was watching you, but he had to leave, so he called me to take over."

"I don't need - " he started.

" - we thought you should have someone here who could use a cellphone, that's all," he said placatingly. "The girls couldn't call for help if you got worse."

 _They were concerned about you, not about us hurting you._

He nodded. Yes. He supposed he could accept that. He turned, slowly, getting to his feet with Blue standing with him, acting as a support.

"Carter and Ms Dearing said you should go to the hospital as soon as you were, uh, awake," Barry added.

His lips quirked a smile. "You mean as soon as someone could persuade me to leave the rapotor paddock, right?" he said, remembering the conversation with Carter – and a couple of subsequent ones, now he came to think of it. Damn.

"Ah, yeah," Barry grinned.

"Don't worry," Owen said. "I was planning on heading there myself."

 _Coffee first,_ Blue suggested, her teasing echoed by the others, as they reminded him that as far as they were concerned, he was useless without enough caffeine. Doubly so now.

"After coffee," he conceded.

 _And a shower,_ Blue instructed. _You smell like a raptor._

He looked at her. "I always smell like a raptor," he pointed out. There hadn't been a day he hadn't spent time with them, and casual contact was easy and commonplace.

She gave a low rumbling chitter, the equivalent of laughter. _Enough that even humans will notice. Save it for when you need to remind someone who you are._

Alpha raptor. Right. He turned back to see Barry watching the exchange in bemusement. Alpha raptor who definitely needed coffee. And, apparently, a shower.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Sorry this took so long! The holidays got in the way and I'm trying to get back into the swing of things.**

* * *

He dozed off in the shower, only catching himself when his head lightly bounced against the tiles. Great. His head was already pounding, and...huh. His fingers were raw and blistered and there was dirt beneath his nails. Blearily, he wondered how that had happened?

Shaving was definitely a step too far, and it felt like a minor miracle that he was able to find some clothes he figured would be presentable enough. Hair still damp, he shoved on a pair of sunglasses, which at least made the light slightly less unbearable.

When he shuffled back into the kitchen, Barry was there, holding out a mug of coffee, and Owen was too grateful to immediately question what he was doing in his house – instead, he just gulped it down quickly.

"Thanks," he said belatedly. "You didn't have to stick around. I'll head over to the hospital soon."

"I thought I would wait and drive you in," Barry said, unmoved.

He grimaced. "Don't worry about it, I'll just ride my bike in. It'll be fine."

 _No._

"I'm not sure that's a good idea."

He winced, as Blue's flat tone and Barry's more diplomatic one came practically simultaneously, making his head ache all the more.

 _No bike until you can stay awake for more than five minutes at a time._

 _Really? You're ganging up on me now?_

 _I worry._

Blue's soft echo of his own so-frequent sentiment had a way of disarming him. And Barry was looking at him with a similar concern.

He sighed, conceding with ill grace. "Alright. Thank you," he said to Barry.

 _Mother hen,_ he muttered silently at Blue.

Her answering affectionate amusement told him she was well aware that his headache and general misery were making him irritable.

Ah, well. Really he should just be glad that the hangover at least wasn't transmitted through the bond. Irritable raptors were difficult to deal with.

 _No more than an irritable alpha,_ Blue retorted.

"So what have I missed?" he asked, as he finished his coffee.

"A lot of trainers are out sick today after the inoculations yesterday," Barry told him. "As far as I can tell, they're all ones who have, eh, a special talent with their animals."

Something that affected the pretenaturally talented? He'd never heard of anything like that before. "Is everyone else alright?"

Barry grinned. "Far as I know, just a whole bunch of people got really mellow."

That was something at least. But he still figured he should probably go and see Annika and figure out what was going on.

Honestly he had to admit that Blue and Barry had probably been right. He dozed off twice on the drive to the hospital – though that could also have been due to Barry's taste in music leaning rather more to the easy listening than he'd previously expected.

"So, you had an interesting day, mon ami," Barry said, glancing sideways at him as Owen came close to knocking his head off the window.

"So it seems, though I don't remember too much," he admitted. "When did you get there?"

"Around midnight," Barry replied. "At that point you were helping Charlie dig up one of the bushes while you told her about a dog you'd trained while you were military."

He glanced ruefully down at his fingers. Well, that explained the blisters and the dirt. Then the second half of what Barry had said sunk in and he blinked. Huh. That was new. The pack – especially Blue, obviously – were well aware that he'd had a life before them, but it was with a raptor's understanding – the past was unimportant. And some of that had passed onto him – just as he processed trauma like a raptor now, so too he'd found himself less inclined towards spontaneously reminisces. He considered the future, but he lived in the present.

Talking to Charlie about his life in the navy, even obliquely? He wished he could remember that properly, wished he could remember why.

"I wonder if she was listening?" he said aloud.

"Ah, I could not say," Barry said apologetically. "That was when Delta started to walk towards me and I shut the paddock gate."

He nodded, understanding. He might be certain that Delta had just been intent on saying hello to her second-favourite human, but with him out of it to all intents and purposes, he could understand not taking the risk.

Third favourite human, he corrected himself. He counted too.

They pulled up to the hospital. "Thanks," Owen said sincerely. "I owe you one."

Barry waved a hand dismissively. "Buy me a beer sometime, it's fine. Now I've got to head to the metriacanthosaurus enclosure. There's a lot of trainers out sick today."

He nodded. Yeah, he couldn't think quite what the proportion of trainers was pretenatural, but there were a lot of them. He wondered, for a moment, whether anyone else had decided to get up close and personal with their charges, but no. If there had been any serious problems, Barry would have said something.

Annika was evidently expecting him. She looked tired and nervous, and he smiled, trying to put her at ease. By the look on her face, it came over as more of a grimace.

He felt Blue move smoothly to the front of his mind and he welcomed her silently, happy for her to watch through his eyes. After all, he was there whenever she had any kind of medical problem, he could understand why she wanted the same knowledge about him. Apart from her natural concern, this had affected the whole pack.

"Owen...Mr Grady. I am so sorry about this," Annika began.

"Not to worry," he said effortfully. "There's no harm done. Uh, right?"

"Not as far as I can tell," she said, and for good news she certainly didn't sound happy. "It was something in the inoculation that I gave you and the rest of the trainers yesterday. It affected pretenaturals differently from other people. I'd never even considered the possibility. But I should have."

 _Yes. She should._

"We aren't really supposed to be different from anyone else though," he pointed out, to both of them. "So how could you have known? Actually, how could this even happen?"

She sighed. "Just as your MRI is different from a 'normal' pretenatural's, so too is a pretenatural's scan different from a 'normal' humans. As long as there are differences in the brain, there can be unexpected effects. Effects that as far as I can tell, no one has ever considered or tested for."

Anger stirred. Not his. _They injected you with untested drugs._

"But everything was tested on other humans," he pointed out quickly. "It was all tried. You can't blame yourself, Annika."

 _You are not other humans. You wouldn't let them inject us with anything without knowing it had been tested on our kind._ The anger was cold, and not really directed at Annika.

 _There is no harm done,_ he reminded her.

 _There might have been._

And that was it, really. Blue could understand and accept what had happened as it was. But she was bothered by the idea there could be other medical dangers lurking out there, unknown to them.

 _I've been in hospital and had medicine plenty of times before without a problem. This was a one off._

She wasn't convinced. And, seemingly, neither was Annika, who gave him a thorough check up, clicking her tongue unhappily at the description of his current headache, and for a moment he was afraid she was going to insist he stay in the hospital, just in case. But in the end she let him go with some painkillers and the admonition to rest and stay hydrated.

 _See? I'm fine._ He made sure an undercurrent of reassurance accompanied the thought.

"There is one more thing," Annika added, almost hesitantly. "All the affected trainers are meeting this afternoon so we can document any reactions to other drugs and treatments you may have had in the past, to see if there's any kind of pattern. It is voluntary, naturally, and will be kept in strict confidence. I know that you have always been averse to being studied in any way - "

" - no, that makes sense," he assured her. "Thank you, I'll be there."

She relaxed. "Oh, good," she said with a sigh of relief. "It is not pleasant, being the woman who poisoned half the park."

"Well," he grinned tiredly. "You're more like the woman who got half the park stoned. Which has to be better, right?"

* * *

Carter found Owen Grady sitting at the back of Starbucks behind a very large mug of black coffee. He looked paler than normal and there was a pair of dark glasses lying haphazardly across the table.

Of course the part of his brain that never stopped analysing situations pointed out that Owen had chosen the seat where he could see the entire shop and the entrance without being seen himself. Predator behaviour, he might say, except that left him to imagine a raptor sitting in Starbucks holding a latte. Really, it was possible to go too far in cataloguing Owen's raptor traits.

He sat down opposite and Owen gave a dull grunt of acknowledgement.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Haven't been this hungover since I left the military," Owen told him blearily.

He grimaced in sympathy. "Are the pack alright?"

"Yeah, thankfully. This is all just me now." He sounded miserable.

"You want me to give you a ride back to your place?" Carter offered.

Owen shook his head. "Nah. Thanks, but nah. Got a meeting in the hospital in a couple of hours. No point in going home yet – I'd just fall asleep and miss it."

"If you're sure," Carter agreed doubtfully. Owen looked like sleep might be the best thing for him.

"I'm sure you've got enough on your plate anyway," Owen added.

"Oh, yeah," he agreed with feeling. They had enough people to cover the absent trainers, but it had meant calling in people on their days off, and after discussions with Claire, Carter had agreed to increase the security presence to cover for any incidents, and to allow his guys to lend an extra pair of hands if need be. They might not have advanced training in animal handling, but they were fine at heavy lifting, even if that meant hauling packages of raw meat all over the place.

Speaking of which - "Are your girls okay? You need anyone to go check on them?"

Owen gave him an odd look. "It's fine. I'll be home by the time they're looking for food. And _they're_ enjoying this sun anyway."

Oh, right. They'd had to cover for the other trainers because no one else lived with their charges.

And that – as he watched Owen staring balefully at the bottom of his mug until a barista, wearing an expression that was two parts sympathy to one part flirt, brought him a refill – that, obliquely took him to his next thought. The thought he'd been toying with all morning.

Last night he'd heard Owen saying 'I love you too' to Blue. And it wasn't _Owen's_ declaration that surprised him – anyone with a pair of eyes knew he loved the pack. Even people who had no idea of the bond, or that Owen was talented, or any of what that meant, still knew that Owen Grady absolutely adored his animals.

No, it had been the 'too'. Owen had been responding to Blue's spontaneous declaration of her own feelings. She understood love – an entirely abstract concept, a _human_ concept, and that shouldn't have been a surprise, but it was.

The funny thing was he wouldn't have thought twice about describing a dog as loving their owner, and he knew Blue was far, far smarter than any dog. Paradoxically, it was that intelligence that gave him pause – it was easier to see it as cold and alien. Threatening, even.

Once he would have assumed that the pack kept Owen as their alpha unchallenged because they understood he was useful to them, because having a human alpha meant they got the freedom to run and hunt in the restricted zone in a way no other dinosaur on the island could. He was long past that now. He'd seen enough to know that Blue and her pack really were absolutely devoted to Owen, that they would defend him at any cost. That they loved him.

And still it was one thing to understand that intellectually, but quite another to hear it said, even second hand.

He shook his head slowly as he finished his own coffee. "You know, Claire's talking about handing out bonuses for dealing with your weirdness."

Owen blinked slowly at him. " _My_ weirdness. Wait, how was any of this my fault?"

"Just wait till you see the pictures," he grinned, enjoying the look of consternation on Owen's face as he stood up and walked away.

"Pictures? What pictures? _Carter...!"_

* * *

 **A/N: Thanks for reading, what do you think?**


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